The Shattered Star is a Pathfinder
Adventure Path published by Paizo, thematically based on seeking out seven parts
of an ancient artifact once owned by Xin, the First King of the long fallen empire
of Thassilon. Each of the seven parts were (conveniently enough) keyed to a specific
school of magic / virtue / sin / skymetal (a lot of sevens going on here) and were
unsurprisingly stolen by each of the seven Runelords who conspired together to kill
Xin and take his shiny stuff in proper old school idiom.

Many thousands of years later these shards, each a potent minor artifact unto itself,
are scattered and secreted around Varisia. They have the rather convient feature
that each of them can find the next in the chain so that they can be reunited, thus
finding just one of them can lead a sufficiently motivated person to be the first
kid on their block to have the complete set! Despite this thoughtful feature, the
seven parts have not yet been gathered and reassembled over the course of 10,000
years give or take a decade. But thanks to our bold heroes, that's all about to
change!

The Shards of Sin

Write-ups are provided for the seven parts of the Sihedron,
aka the Shards of Sin, as well as some advice on how to
handle them.

Dawn of the Scarlet Sun

Dawn of the Scarlet Sun GM Resources: Pathfinder FAE write ups for the various
challenges, opponents, and NPC's the PC's may encounter in the course of the Dawn
of the Scarlet Sun adventure module.

For my campaign, I chose to run a variant of the free Dawn of the Scarlet
Sun module as the lead in to Shattered Star. In my version, the succubus
Avalexi has already acquired one of the parts of
the Sihedron (though Lust would be more obviously thematic, to avoid later complications
she has the Shard of Pride which is located in Magnimar in the adventure path).

I beefed up her coterie to include an infernal sorceress and a warlock, and extended
the idea of setting up a cult dedicated to the demon lord Shax.

The hook to tie it into the Adventure Path is: the PC's should acquire the Shard
of Pride after defeating Avalexi and pals, only to have it stolen from them by Natalya Vancaskerkin and thus lead directly into Shattered
Star part 1.

Even if it is not used as the lead in, the Dawn of the Scarlet Sun lends itself
to being used as a side quest within the larger framework of the Shattered Star
(the Adventure Path itself suggests this several times, typically placing it between
the second and third part of the Path). The material is provided to facilitate either
usage.

Player Resources

Here are some things to think about when choosing or making a character for The
Dawn Of The Shattered Star adventure:

The Shattered Star Adventure Path is thematically anchored on seven artifacts that
were each once owned by a Runelord of ancient Thassilon. Thus, a character with
strong Thassilonian lore or a background concept involving that doomed civilization
of many ages passed will likely gain more than the usual benefit.

The Shattered Star Adventure Path has a sort of meta-theme of classic dungeon crawls
with a twist. What this means to a player is that a good deal of the adventures
will be spent indoors or underground in relatively confined spaces. More outdoorsy
and social characters still have opportunities to shine, but players might want
to ensure that their character has some relevance when in a "dungeon" setting.

Each of the Runelords was a very powerful specialist in a specific kind of magic
and their ancient legacy has left deadly magical traps that have survived thousands
of years and remain a threat to the unwary. A well prepared adventuring troupe should
have some way to answer the inevitable encounters of this kind.

If playing the Adventure Paths in canonical order, Shattered Star takes place some
years after the Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure
Paths. All three Adventure Paths are strongly rooted in Varisia, and each later
printed Adventure Path assumes that the events that occurred in the previous are
in effect. A character that uses some element(s) of the previous two Adventure Paths
in their own background is likely to get some play out it.

The Runelords were big into binding evil extraplanar baddies to do their bidding
and guard their stuff. Plan accordingly.

Intent Of The Material

The intent of this material is for a GM to use a copy of a published Paizo product
for the structure of an adventure (The Shattered Star Adventure Path in this case),
with the Pathfinder FAE guidelines presented within this site and the Pathfinder
FAE versions of the monsters, NPC's, traps, and so forth encountered in the adventure
that are provided below.

The main advantage to "borrowing" Pathfinder material for use in a Fate Accelerated
game is that it allows a GM to easily take advantage of the many high quality professional
resources published by Paizo such as maps, pawns, and artwork, but using a much
lighter weight story based game engine with dynamic resolutions. Additionally, players
that like Pathfinder that might not otherwise be interested in trying Fate Accelerated
can be enticed to give Pathfinder FAE a shot and thus become introduced to the game.

We've had a lot of fun running a variety of games in this way, both using published
adventures as well as homebrewed scenarios based in Golarion. We hope that others
might find similar fun for themselves reusing the material.